"Taran wanted to make a sword; but Coll, charged with the practical side of his education, decided on horseshoes. And so it had been horseshoes all morning long."

So begins "The Book of Three" (1964), the first volume of Lloyd Alexander's "The Chronicles of Prydain," and so began my lifelong thing for literary fantasy. I was 6 or 7 when I scarfed down Alexander's Newbery-winning series recounting Taran the Assistant Pig-Keeper's unlikely development into the magic-sword-wielding hero who eventually vanquishes Arawn Death-Lord.

Prydain has nothing on Wonderland or Narnia, which I had visited earlier, but it was Taran's adventures that swept me inexorably on to Tolkien's Middle Earth (a very tendentious place, I now realize), Madeleine L'Engle's Camazotz, Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age, Piers Anthony's Xanth, and beyond, to Neil Gaiman's Dreaming, Gene Wolfe's Celidon, George R.R. Martin's Westeros. Such was my love of Alexander's books that I have no desire to revisit them decades later, when I am less inclined to overlook their aesthetic defects.

Fantasy defies easy definition (and often shades into science fiction), but it is certainly a type of the weird, the uncanny, the otherworldly. Its roots lie in mythology and romance, but the 19th century saw fantasy begin to take shape as a distinctive subgenre, flowering from E.T.A. Hoffmann's and Edgar Allan Poe's imaginations into the enchanted dominions of John Ruskin, George MacDonald, William Morris, Lewis Carroll, H.G. Wells. Fantasy's enjoying a popular renaissance of late — see "Harry Potter," "Game of Thrones," the Narnia movies, Lev Grossman's "Magicians" series, Deborah Harkness' "All Souls Trilogy," Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell," Patrick Rothfuss' "The Kingkiller Chronicle." It's OK with me.

The critic Harold Bloom has offered a generic formula of fantasy, which I reproduce warily (caveat lector):

Fantasy, as a belated version of romance, promises an absolute freedom from belatedness, from the anxieties of literary influence and origination, yet this promise is shadowed always by a psychic over-determination in the form itself of fantasy, that puts the stance of freedom into severe question.

You will have noticed that, although initially the world through the looking-glass or wardrobe seems alive with wonder and possibility, some Red Queen or White Witch will be along eventually. The quest for freedom implicates the quester in bondage, to paraphrase Bloom. But Bloom suggests this requisite unease is fantasy's true strength: "What promises to be the least anxious of literary modes becomes much the most anxious." Within that reversal the power of fantasy lies.

Herewith, then, my five favorite fantasy novels (excluding, as too obvious, the Alice books), all of them shadowed by overdetermination to a disquieting degree.

"Lilith" by George MacDonald (1895)

Generally regarded as the first fantasy novelist per se, the Scottish MacDonald is somewhat neglected now, though his champions have included the likes of C.S. Lewis, W.H. Auden, G.K. Chesterton and Madeleine L'Engle. A Congregationalist minister until his doubts about damnation disturbed the deacons, he spent his life very poor and very hospitable. He was also Charles Dodgson's mentor, a connection not irrelevant to the tale of Mr. Vane, who walks through an old mirror into "the region of the seven dimensions," where he joins Lilith, Adam's first wife, in a battle against the house of death. It's often ineptly written, but it's dark, tremendous stuff.

"A Voyage to Arcturus" by David Lindsay (1920)

The weirdest novel I've ever read — maybe the weirdest novel anyone's ever read — "Voyage" begins with a séance and ends with … well, you figure it out. I'm just going to quote a plot summary from fan site Violet Apple and assure you it doesn't even begin to do justice to this book's complexities, frustrations and wonders: "After a visit to a séance, Maskull and his dour companion Nightspore are invited to journey to the satellite planet of the binary star Arcturus by a stranger called Krag. Separated from his companions on their arrival, Maskull, who finds (that he has) sprouted new sensory organs, learns that Krag is (considered) the Devil of this world. However, he soon learns that the 'God,' called Crystalman, is not all he seems either."

"The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969)

Others would choose Le Guin's "Earthsea" series, "The Dispossessed," or "The Lathe of Heaven" — all gotta-reads — but I think this is her finest novel. The people of Gethen (Winter) are androgynous, assuming sexual characteristics only once a month. This is the aspect of the book everyone focuses on. Gethen has never known war, I guess because there are no "men." Whatever. The real interest lies in the dynamic cultures Le Guin has conjured and the humanity of the story: Terran Genly Ai visits Gethen and meets Estraven. They journey across the ice, and it's beautiful.

"The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe (1980-83)

A humble nobody — a hobbit, an assistant pig-keeper, a squire, a moisture farmer on Tatooine — becomes Somebody. Fantasy loves the Caedmon/King Arthur trope. On Urth in the far future, Severian is a journeyman torturer with an eidetic memory who will eventually set forth for a new sun. Wolfe's imagination is a teeming rain forest; get lost beneath its rich, swaying canopy.

"Little, Big" by John Crowley (1981)

This is the story of Smoky Barnable, who fell in love with Alice Drinkwater. The tale wanders across a hundred years of the Drinkwaters, an old family with ties, perhaps, to the world of Fairy. In an essay on George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis wrote that a genius for fantasy "can coexist with great inferiority in the art of words." Crowley's writing requires no such disclaimer. My love for this book is so profound that I hesitate to recommend it to others, as if I were surrendering some precious secret.

Michael Robbins is the author of the poetry collections "Alien vs. Predator" and "The Second Sex" as well as a forthcoming book of criticism, "Equipment for Living."